With Jeremy Clarkson officially out of the BBC and a high probability that May and Hammond will follow suit, Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman has quit through an email forwarded to his former BBC colleagues with the subject “Au revoir“.

As you might have noticed, I am a massive fan of Top Gear. Did the website give it away? But sadly, I strongly believe Top Gear in its current format simply cannot and will not survive without Jeremy Clarkson.

His chemistry on-screen with Richard Hammond and James May was the very glue which held the show together in the early years, and then solidified it as time passed and made Top Gear so utterly fantastic to watch. To replace Clarkson with a new presenter and attempt to soldier on would be a catastrophic mistake.

Hammond and May already know this, I’m sure, and I expect we’ll see their contractual obligations with Top Gear lapse at the end of the month too. They’ll likely continue to be involved with the BBC and work on their own shows separately, but I’d say their Top Gear days are most definitely over. Expect to hear more about that soon.

Well it’s official, not even a million-signature petition was enough to save Jeremy Clarkson from being sacked by the BBC, after an investigation concluded he attacked a producer on the programme. A source close to the investigation, explaining the decision not to renew Clarkson’s contract, has said: “There can’t be one rule for talent and one rule for ordinary human beings.”

Things have been hectic in the world of Top Gear over the past few weeks – what with both Jeremy Clarkson’s job and the show’s future both hanging in the balance. Without Jeremy it seems, Top Gear surely could not go on. Jeremy Clarkson is Top Gear. But all of that needs to be put aside for a moment, because I feel something far more important has been overlooked.

Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman deserve all the credit they have received for the work they’ve put into Top Gear, taking what was a pokey BBC motoring show and turning it into one of the biggest television programmes on the planet.

But there’s another man who deserves even more credit, because without him Top Gear as you know it today probably wouldn’t exist.

An emotional Jeremy Clarkson has been filmed at a charity event launching a tirade against BBC bosses, labelling them “fucking bastards” for suspending him from Top Gear.

Clarkson hinted that he expected to be sacked as a result of the internal investigation into an alleged fracas with one of Top Gear’s producers, Oisin Tymon. The report from the investigation will be made public next week.

“The BBC have fucked themselves,” Clarkson told a charity auction in north London on Thursday.

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